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Thursday, April 28, 2011

My heart has been so full in recent weeks that I have had a difficult time writing here. A good friend of our family died recently after battling a brain tumor for several months, I received a somewhat discouraging diagnosis (which I'll be sharing about soon here), we've been busy trying to finish up our school year, put in a garden, etc, etc.

But this I can say: God is good! His plans are unfathomably exciting and wonderful. Oh! How I love following Him. During all of the difficulties and stretching that we experience here it has been so, so good for me to be re-reminded of His faithfulness, love and care for me. I have walked with the Lord for many years now, but still I *need* to spend time daily in God's Word in order to renew my poor mind. How quickly I forget the encouraging truths of God's Word! Silly me!

Anyway, on to today's post: part two of our recent trip out West with my parents. After visiting Death Valley, CA for two days, we left and traveled to Zion National Park, UT.

I checked out photos online of Zion National Park before leaving on our trip, so I had some idea what to expect, but as always seems to be the case, it was vastly more than I anticipated! There is something about being out West that just makes my heart feel at home. (Well, as "at home" as I can feel, this side of heaven!) Who knows, perhaps we will pack up and move out West someday!

iPhone photos stitched together using the app AutoStitch

I think we picked one of the best weekends of the year to visit Zion! The trees were just beginning to leaf out, but I still had fabulous views of the landscape without competing with the leaves to see.

The majority of my photos were taken using my trusty Canon Rebel xsi, but even my beloved iPhone got in on the action at times... like this shot.

I find myself completely captivated by trees, especially the tough tenacious ones who joyfully hold on for dear life in precarious places.

I love to frame photos with them.

During the few days that we visited Zion, the Cottonwood trees by the Virgin River unfurled their leaves. Don't you just love that new baby green color? I thought it was interesting that the shadow of the tree appears to be leafless in the water....

"He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,

which yields it fruit in it's season

and its leaf does not wither;

and in whatever he does, he prospers."

Ps. 1:3

We explored and hiked. I was so grateful that my foot/ankle fracture had healed enough for me to keep up with everybody!

One of the things that caused a bit of a delay for me in posting this was that I wanted to spend some time in my new favorite photo-editing program, Lightroom and crop/fix lighting in these photos. Unfortunately, life happened (as I mentioned at the beginning of my post) and I decided that if I waited until I had opportunity to play with my photos in Lightroom, I would never end up posting them! So here they are in this post, SOOC (straight out of camera)!

another iPhone photo... pretty cool, huh?

We saw some of the prettiest flowers....

There were many other photos... if you are interested in viewing them, you can go to my Flickr site link in the sidebar and see them.

Meanwhile we're back at work here. I'm in a major cleaning out/purging spree right now~ *love* having things neat and organized. It seems to be a constant battle to keep the "stuff" under control. I'm grateful for all that we have here, but firmly believe that "less is more," and that I want to selectively own my stuff rather than being owned by my stuff, if you know what I mean!

Hope you are having a fabulous week, serving the Lord right where He has you...

Love and hug those that the Lord has placed you with.... it all really does come down to love, doesn't it?

4 comments:

Amazing pictures of just a speck of God's glorious artwork! WOW! What an amazing God we have, and if this is our imperfect, sin-filled world what will heaven be like?

You are always an encouragement to me. It is so hard for me not to get so focused on taking care of the things of life, that I miss the "love" opportunities! Cleaning and "stuff" takes up so much time. I constantly struggle with balance! Thanks for the reminder!

I'm so glad you had such a great time. I'm sorry about your friend. You are in my prayers.